Nixon, Murray & Hathaway on Prisoners of War (POWs)

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I present to you, I present to you, Mr. Robert Briggs.

I would get all the pictures of these folks.

Can you get them?

Mr. Perry Hathaway, the Vice Chairman of the General Lawyer's Session.

Mr. Walter Macklin, the Chairman of the POW Lawyer's Session.

Mr. John Taylor, Mr. Washington, on the Video Lawyer's Session.

Thank you, sir.

I was here two years ago and I'm trying to describe it.

We've got an LEA grant and we've reached over $400,000.

That's right.

The president.

Yes, the president.

Yes.

Thank you.

Ha ha ha!

would you like me to simply describe the room tell me tell me briefly i think i know i know about it

What do you think they're accomplishing?

The program is basically very simple in design, although the execution gets a little complicated sometimes.

There are three basic parts to the program.

The first part is to put young lawyers who volunteer in contact with the families of prisoners of war or missing in action to help them with their civil, local problems.

The JAG officer's been a marvelous job with the military problems.

A typical example would be a wife would be, say, stationed in Florida, but she's from Virginia and she owns a home in Florida and wants to go back home, but she can't give a clear title to her Florida home.

And the JAG officer wouldn't have a license for Florida.

He might have gone to George Washington or someplace.

So he wouldn't, first of all, he wouldn't be licensed to practice in Florida, and he wouldn't know Florida law.

So we're trying to give her a Florida lawyer as an example.

And that's a nationwide 50-state program.

The second part is to

to enact some remedial legislation, because quite often what she wants to do can't be achieved.

The husband's gone, he can't sign, the power of attorney has expired, so we're trying to give some remedial legislation.

That, incidentally, has been passed by six of the states without a dissenting vote in either house in state legislature.

And state legislation has been passed without any actual legislation.

Yes, sir.

We made the amendment to the

the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act.

That's a possibility.

We could greatly, whatever you're working on now.

Mr. President, we ran into this in California.

But we do have a problem with the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act.

And we are told by DOD that any legislation which would be enacted

Any proceeding taken under that legislation would be void because we can't get jurisdiction over the serviceman.

The Air Force Reserve lawyers in California have attempted

to draft a particular legislation, which would make a minor change in the Civil Relief Act.

And it's not met with the success that is needed.

Now, we'll be having hearings in California on the proposed legislation probably within the next two months.

And that's one question.

that they're going to ask is because the title now has said absolutely no, it won't, we'll get it, I guess we'll just get it done as, you know, Congress will, or whatever we do.

Yes, it's a very positive thing.

Well, of course, it's for its right to, as Bill put that here, so it's great that you're asking that.

You can tell them that it's an active step, it's a priority, and also we'll work it out to the best of us we can.

It's, you know, it's important.

And then the third phase of the program is simply to coordinate our activities with the military so that they will know we exist, they will know our offer is there, and get the word to the families.

You see, we don't have a complete list of the families.

The families can keep themselves off the list if they want to, but the military has that, so if we can go through them and disseminate our program, then they'll know that we exist.

Where you'd be held, sir, is number one, by simply saying you endorsed the program.

That'll help us in the state houses when we go to those houses and try to get the remedial legislation passed.

And secondly, by giving us some liaison or contact man here that we could call when we get in a problem in California or somewhere.

We could call this man.

He could call us at the governor or someone and say, look, this is a good program.

The president endorsed it.

We appreciate your helping move the legislation through.

And then thirdly, of course, is where you test on it.

The other problem, of course, which

on their lives almost, because they don't, they're not sure that more is happening than anything else.

That is true, what's gonna happen to their spouse.

And there, we,

All you're going to do is simply get all the insurance that we're not taking any strong on.

Generally, diplomatically, I'd rather we see the blackening groups, brightening groups, and, of course, working through whether or not it's on the problem.

And we're playing a very, very hard game.

The hard game to keep on keeping the subject from the center is very important.

And the, of course, what would be a disaster

in terms of having any bargaining power over the POWs, would be to do with some of these.

Frankly, these are many price people would do, and that would be, well, let's just get out and look at our net back, because you see that the difficulty is that you take that line, that if you're dealing with international madness, then it's raising the price.

What do you think about that?

What do you think about this?

What do you think about that?

So what we have to do is to have a hard, cold deal of, we've got to keep the fire going in pollution, that's why, clearly part of it, as the president argued, he's a defensive river, and he was a massive aircraft, and he drove at a time where the weather here is, we're going to continue our air attacks to maintain our electrical force, because we have to do that in order to give them

the top of my agenda this year is to get some resolution to that problem.

Don't give any false hopes.

I mean, they've had too much of that, but it's all they can see is the war in our homes.

As the war nears conclusion, certainly as far as the United States is concerned.

their hopes should not go down, they should go up, but they should not fall for, I mean, that line, the left-wingers, you know, the, well, the total decent types that say, oh, God, if we just, if we just tell them our enemies, we'll pull out the bomb and the rest of us get our people back.

It's been tried, as you know.

They should not be discouraged, because we've got a few things to do, because we start a few times a day, we try to stop that pain.

And so we're doing the very best we can.

We have to have not only our total sensitivity, but our total commitment.

That's what we did.

We're going to get back.

Of course, we get asked these type of questions.

And officially, we have the policy.

And we said that you should stay out of it.

That's right.

We said, you're going to have to deal with members who will have different attitudes to the war than others.

I guess, in terms of your own attitudes.

We found that the president is a total preventative worker going here in the East.

and working on it night and day, and you can have confidence that you're going to succeed.

There's obviously a diversion most of the time, which is to portray a share.

And our role, as Bob says, is we're trying to get them in a position they sell the car at seven years old.

I don't know if that's right.

You're right.

But those things are so important.

To them, it's us.

We just have to try it.

I can see that.

They can't even go back to their own home and live with their parents because they've got a home in a foreign state and the title isn't the husband's name.

They can't give up their title.

I see.

That's the problem.

Those things are so important because at least they help them with those material things without which they cannot live at all.

On the other thing, you all should have confidence in the fact that we're working on a bigger problem, too.

And that's better than having a nurse succeed.

Well, anyway, I wish you well.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you, Mr. President, very much.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Thank you so much.

Well, listen, I thank you for your work.

Thank you.

Well, that's great.

We've got a little of your

We love you, Hunter.

Nixon, Murray & Hathaway on Prisoners of War (POWs)

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on April 4, 1972

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